1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a surface treatment apparatus which can modify the surface qualities of different parts of an image print obtained by various image-forming methods, and to an image-forming apparatus comprising this surface treatment apparatus which can easily form images having different surface qualities in different parts.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, images have been formed by various methods such as silver halide photography, heat developing, inkjet recording, thermosensitive recording and electrophotography. In the prior art, when an image formed by various methods was a glossy surface, it was difficult to write upon it and recording was not easy.
Therefore, a photographic print having a photoesensitive material layer in only part of an image-forming surface was proposed (Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open No. 06-50056). However, in this case, the photographic print is not easy to reproduce, so it is unsuitable for mass production.
Another technique was proposed wherein the surface qualities of the image print were modified after image recording (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 05-53288). However, in this case the photographic print could not be given different properties in different parts simply by uniformly modifying the whole surface of the photographic print.
In JP-A No. 2001-053943, an image-forming system was proposed wherein color information and gloss information are acquired from an image, and image recording is performed on a recording medium based on these two types of image information. Image recording is performed by converting gloss information or non-gloss information into the thermal energy of a thermosensitive head.
In JP-A No. 05-53288 and JP-A No. 2001-53943, there was no mention of surface treatment of a thermoplastic resin layer, and surface treatment was performed by applying heat and pressure to an image-forming layer. However, even if only the surface of the image-forming layer is surface-treated, the surface (interface) depression-and-protrusion shape pattern of the thermoplastic resin layer changes with time and affects the image-forming layer surface, so a desired depression-and-protrusion shape pattern could not be obtained.
Further, when a contact member was released from the sheet at high temperature, the depression and protrusion shape pattern of the contact member transferred to the thermoplastic resin layer and image-forming layer sometimes plastically deformed in an undesirable way due to other external disturbances, and a surface coating layer (transparent clear layer) was required to improve glossiness as described in JP-A No. 2001-53943, which led to increased costs.
Therefore, a surface treatment apparatus which permitted modification of the surface qualities in different parts of an image print obtained by various image-forming methods, and an image-forming apparatus comprising this surface treatment apparatus which made it easy to form images having different surface qualities in different parts, was still unknown.
Object
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a surface treatment apparatus which permits modification of the surface qualities in different parts of an image print obtained by various image-forming methods, and an image-forming apparatus comprising this surface treatment apparatus which makes it easy to form of images having different surface qualities in different parts.